Today is Father's Day. It's always a bit of a weird day for me. I miss him, but it was his time. He had a lot of time here, lots of things changing in life. We were friends, though, real friends I said. What are real friends exactly?
I was checking out the the dashboard of my 360, and I saw an screen about a girl meeting her social network. Naturally, I thought this was a bad idea, but I figured I have nothing better to do so I decided to see this lately train wreck in reality TV. It was sponsored by M$ as a way to promote their latest device, the Kin.
Former M$ father of Xbox and Zune (notice the title up there) J Allard started Project Pink which became the Kin. It's like the T-Mobile Sidekick, a "trendy" device designed for active, social young people only it's for Verizon. Hell, it's even made by the same people who created the Sidekick. It's all about sending messages and staying in touch electronically. Blah. Blog nerds call it the smart dumbphone. What does that even mean? Combining a (now extinct) PDA with a cellphone makes it a smartphone, and any phone that isn't a smartphone is a dumbphone. How arbitrary.
The Kin seems kinda cool though; however, I will not go to totalitarian Verizon with their insane contracts, costs, and awesome network. People can say what they want, but they gave me a sweet plan, unlimited everything at a great price. I like the iPhone (for the most part), but I will NOT go back to AT&T. Even though I can use an unlocked iPhone on T Mobile but I like 3G speed so I'm sticking with Android. It's funny how phones started out as cinder blocks with antennae for the privileged, became tiny contraptions with strange shapes and colors, and are now big (well decently sized so you can "hold" it and a not lose it down a sewer drain) and look almost like everything else. All this technology just so we stay in touch with people on Facebook.
Facebook is an amazing idea created by a guy in his 20s and made him an obscene amount of money. It follows what I call the law of monetized popularity, once something becomes popular people will try to make lots of money off of it. Another example is TV. Regular TV is free because advertisers pay to have the shows on the air so they can shove their commercials down our throats to influence us to buy crap whether its Drano or Obama. The Internet is the same way which explains why Google is super rich and super influential. Let's face it, those smart bastards are trying to rule the world and they are winning. Googling is the common vernacular for searching the internet just like iPod is to playing music. Tons of people are on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and other social networks so ads follow, just like TV.
I have formulated (cool word huh) the law of belonging. People are naturally drawn to each other for various reasons: curiosity, bored, hatred, sex, common interest, etc. 1 person has 100% of things in common with themselves. 2 people have on average 50% of things in common with each other because they are different, but they are similar enough. The short version is the more people, they fewer things they have in common, but in order to keep the connection, they will focus on what's in common, greatest common factor (thanks math class). These factors could be a movie, a food, a computer, a video game console, a political party, etc.
Today people interact moreso electronically than in real life. Not to say that people don't interact in real life, there just seems to be more connections on the internet than live and in person. People don't want to rejected so the internet allows people to interact with people based on simple factors without showing their real selves. It's a natural emotion response to feel bad if someone rejects you or doesn't find things in common with you when you show your real self. People wear masks and play parts as a way to get by without exposing too much of themselves in real life, whether they are scared or are just to busy to bothered. An online profile allows a person to do that even moreso.
We can chat, email, and text to show people who we are but without showing who "we" are. Facebook gives us a profile so we can let people knows what we like, what we look like, what we're up to, etc. We can "poke", friend, comment, and ignore others from what we see and read. The Microsoft Kin (like other devices) allows people to keep up with instant messengers and Facebook even away from the computer because just gotta stay in contact with our social network.
Back to what I saw today, meeting one's social network. What I watched was the story of Rosa, a rather cute young lady who stay in touch with her friends on Facebook, but are they really her friends? M$ gave her a Kin phone to stay social active with her "friends" and then sent her across the country to meet these people to find out if they are really friends, just online friends, or just don't like her at all. Obviously, this is a ploy to display the Kin's capabilities to solicit interest and a possible purchase. Overall, the adventures of Rosa were quite entertaining. She learns what a connection really is, why she makes it, and if the online connections she makes are real connections. This made me question the use of a social network.
If there ever was a term created by bureaucrats, pencil pushers, and "marketing" people, it's social network. It just sounds goofy. Once again, I believe words fail us. In my social network on Facebook, I have hundreds of friends or do I really? Most people there are because I play Mafia Wars, a free Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game and I need those people to improve my stats so I can advance in the game. Most I never hear from them again once I add them, several help me in the game and I help them. Blah. Then the next group are people from work, a very small group indeed. Next are people I went to school with and finally people I know from other social networks. Long story short, a person is really my friend if I make an effort to keep up with them and they do the same for me. Odds are you are my friend if you have my phone # These people add up to about 10% of my Facebook friends. I would want to meet them or already have. I'm a private person. It has been said that I say a lot about myself but I don't reveal a lot about myself, if that makes any sense.
So why do I use Facebook or social networks? Simple, I use them to make a connection. Mostly, I use it as a sounding board to learn more about myself. I want to see if there if a person or people who can read between the lines and learn about me, but that's just a bonus. Being a part of something while being apart from it, being me. Disappearing while being seen.
People in real life pass you on the street and it's like they are nothing but scenery in my day. I will probably never see them again and am not compelled to remember them. People want to belong, to be remembered, to be understood. The world is nearly endless. Progress and technology have made things seem that they are closer to each other but it's only an illusion, at least in my mind. Like many of my thoughts, they travel in a circle ending up where I began. At the end of the day, I know who my friends are. I still miss my dad.
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